The custard is setting; meanwhileI not only have my own history to worry about...But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to largeUnfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the pointOf being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The extra worry began it--on theBlue blue mountain--she never set foot...And then and there. Meanwhile the hostMourned her quiet tenure. They all stayed chatting.No one did much about eating.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

it is best then that the buried word remain buried for we were intended to appreciate only its fruits and not the secret principle... activating them to know this would be to know too much. Meanwhile it is possible to know just enough, and this is all we were supposed to know, toward which we have been straining all our lives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

And we may be led, then, upward through morePowerful forms of poetry, past columns...With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference.Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, bloomsUnhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

During the fifties, for example, the American character appeared with some consistency that became a model of manhood adopted by m...any men: the Fifties male. He got to work early, labored responsibly, supported his wife and children and admired discipline. Reagan is a sort of mummified version of this dogged type. This sort of man didn't see women's souls well, but he appreciated their bodies; and his view of culture and America's part in it was boyish and optimistic. Many of his qualities were strong and positive, but underneath the charm and bluff there was, and there remains, much isolation, deprivation, and passivity. Unless he has an enemy, he isn't sure that he is alive. The Fifties man was supposed to like football, be aggressive, stick up for the United States, never cry, and always provide.... During the sixties, another sort of man appeared. The waste and violence of the Vietnam war made men question whether they knew what an adult male really was. If manhood meant Vietnam, did they want any part of it? Meanwhile, the feminist movement encouraged men to actually look at women, forcing them to become conscious of concerns and sufferings that the Fifties male labored to avoid.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really com...es: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

And meanwhile we have gone on living,Living and partly living,...Picking together the pieces,Gathering faggots at nightfall,Building a partial shelter,For sleeping and eating and drinking and laughter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned t...he natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favourite love stories in prose and verse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The cowboy ... is well on his way to becoming a figure of magnificent proportions. Bowlegged and gaunt, he stands as the apotheosi...s of manly perfection. Songs, novels, movies, magazines, and operettas have made the least inquiring of us well acquainted with his extraordinary courage, unfailing gallantry, and uncanny skill with gun or lariat. The farmer, meanwhile, sits stolidly on his tractor, bereft of romance and adventure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The (post) structuralist temper requires too great a depersonalization of the writing/speaking subject. Writing becomes plagiarism...; speaking becomes quoting. Meanwhile, we do write, we do speak.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »